As Long as We're Going Down
by labonsoirfemme
Summary: In order to avoid a forced marriage to Edric Baratheon, Sansa tells King Stannis that she's already married...to Jon Snow. (Modern Era)(Canon Divergence)(Jon x Sansa)
1. Chapter 1

Shamelessly inspired by a post floating around on tumblr saying that the fake!married trope is one of the best tropes.

* * *

The jagged skyline of King's Landing rises sharp and strong through the windshield, and for a moment, the familiarity of it seems strange to Sansa. But she'd shaken and cried at the sight of Winterfell's ancient walls as the jet passed over it, so she supposes that it's not so strange. After all, she'd only been away from the capitol for four years-a shorter span of time than the six years she'd actually spent living there. The first time she'd laid eyes on the capitol, it had seemed to glimmer in the sunlight. Joffrey had smiled and pointed out the broken spires of the Dragonpit, the belfry of the Great Sept of Baelor, and the turrets and ramparts of the Red Keep, all set against the wall of silvery skyscrapers built across the Blackwater Rush.

Something over the Bay catches her eye, and she tilts her head to see it better. "What is that, scaffolding?" she asks the driver, leaning forward from her seat in the back to point. Jon stops tapping away on his phone to bob and weave his head and peer around the headrest and get a better view.

"Oh, yes, m'lady," the driver says, following the line of her finger. "There's still some work to be done to repair the damage from the shelling during the Battle. They say that section'll be done by the end of the year."

Sansa sits back in her seat with a frown. "The ceremony from the summer, though? I thought that meant it was all finished."

"Parts of it, sure," the driver agrees with a nod, signaling before merging onto the exit ramp. The car circles up and around, and for a beat, the Blackwater Bay fills their view, and then they drop down and into a gently sloping tunnel that will carry them underneath the dense suburban neighborhoods that spread beyond the outer walls of the capitol. "But some of King Stannis' volleys went clear through the outer walls, and that's what they're still working on. The unveiling from the summer was the more superficial work—the parts that just needed to be shored up and refaced. Surely you saw the damage m'lady, before you left for the North?"

Sansa draws in a slow inhale, lets it out to the count of the flash of the tunnel lights through the window of the town car. She and her lord father been taken out of King's Landing by this tunnel, too, but it had been in the dead of night, and she hadn't been doing much looking back. "No, I didn't."

From the corner of her eye, she sees Jon peering over at her, but on this front, she doesn't need his help.

* * *

_To remain chaste, Baelor the Blessed constructed the Maidenvault to contain his sister-wives, Rhaena, Elaena, and Daena. These chambers belonged to Daena, known to posterity as Daena the Defiant, for she escaped from her prison several times, became pregnant, and refused to name the father of her child. She raised the child, Daemon, in these very chambers, until Aegon IV acknowledged him as one of his Great Bastards and gifted him with the Blackfyre, the longsword wielded by Aegon the Conqueror himself. Daena's later life is largely unknown, likely overshadowed by her son's ill-fated rebellion in an attempt to claim the Iron Throne_ _from his half-brother Daeron the Good_.

Sansa's eyes skim over the plaque just inside the door to the chambers in which King Stannis (Queen Selyse, more likely) had placed her. She knows all of the stories on the plaques inside the Tower of the Hand by heart, and Arya too, most likely, as well as the one that hangs inside the door of her old room in Maegor's Holdfast. That is, unless King Stannis has started to change them. They're meant to educate the guests, to memorialize the Keep as a living monument, but they don't go much beyond what is taught in schools. All the good stories, like Queen Naeys and Aemon the Dragonknight, are relegated to footnotes in textbooks or retold over and over again in varying degrees of salaciousness in popular historical fiction or big budget movie films. Even Daena has a half a dozen documentaries and miniseries done on her—three say she and Aegon were passionately in love, three say she just wanted freedom, and no one _really_ knows.

Sansa pulls her lips between her teeth at that and moves through the entry and into the little sitting room. The three lady's maids that the royal family had provided for Sansa bustle around her, unpacking her trunks and suitcases and shaking out all of her suits and dresses to let them air out before they're hung up in the wardrobes. The gown she's chosen to wear to Princess Shireen's wedding ceremony was one of the first ones that was pulled out, and it's laid spread across the bed with one of the maids smoothing the wrinkles out, so she sits down in a low-profile armchair and leans her head back to peer at the ceiling.

She and Daena have a lot in common, it seems, since the tabloids seem to come up with a new story every other month about the Stark family. Housewives from the Wall to the Broken Arm thinks they know what _really_ happened, and every time she or Arya venture out beyond Winterfell's walls, the rumor mill kicks up again. The entertainment shows and magazine covers need bylines to run underneath their images, after all.

_Did Sansa love Joffrey?: the real reason she stayed in King's Landing_.

_Lady Sansa out in crimson: a Stockholm homage to Cersei? See inside for Stannis' reaction._

_Did Lady Arya hitchhike back to Winterfell? This innkeeper says yes._

_Blonde baby photographed in the First Keep: is this why Stannis sent her away under the cover of darkness? _(This genre of story is usually accompanied by a barrage of photographs of nineteen- and twenty-year-old Sansa in heavy jackets or belted dresses and red circles around her belly and if Arya doesn't set them on fire—literally—then it's a good day.)

She and Arya can handle those just fine—between Syrio and Queen Cersei, both of them had learned to grit their teeth and bear it—but the ones that make them want to scream and shout?

_Lord Stark kept in padded cell. Insider source reveals all._

_Robb fills in for Lord Stark yet again: will Eddard ever return to his former glory?_

_Lady Stark out with mystery man—Northern marriage crumbles!_

One day, in ten or twenty or a hundred years, someone will try to tell her story. Hers and Arya's and her lord father's. But they'll never get it right, just like they can make a dozen movies about Daena the Defiant and never capture the truth. Daena's chambers have been retrofitted with electricity and water and expensive furniture and linens and even Sansa cannot truly comprehend years of confinement in this single building. And a multi-million dollar costume budget and the best cast that Westeros has to offer will never be able to replicate staring down the real King Joffrey and Queen Cersei.

"Lady Sansa," one of the girls, Danyelle, says at her shoulder, startling Sansa out of her thoughts. "Your appointment with the King is in half an hour." She glances down at Sansa's jeans and blazer, and Sansa nods and rises to her feet.

She pulls on a navy sheath set and nude pumps, sits still while Bethany teases the crown of her hair and curls her ends. She pins her hair back on her own though, since her hair is so fine that it slips right through new hands. Her mascara is the only thing left to apply when Devan Seaworth knocks at her door to escort her to Maegor's, so she hastily sweeps some on. It's probably best that way, anyhow—King Stannis seems one to frown at a young lady wearing a triple coat of mascara.

Her suspicions are confirmed as she and Devan enter Maegor's and her eyes fall to empty voids. "His Grace is changing the furnishings to his taste?" Sansa asks as they walk through the corridor. "A Fossoway used to hang just there—Florian and Jonquil. It was one of my favorites in the Keep."

"I'm not sure about that one, but King Stannis sold a lot of the moveable art to museums to offset some of the costs of rebuilding the city." Devan pulls his mouth to one side to chew on the inside of his cheek. "If you'd like, I could check on it for you," he offers slowly, gesturing for her to go ahead of him around the corner. They were headed towards the Small Council room, and Sansa half-expects the twin sphinxes to be missing, given the stripped state of the main corridor (perhaps not "stripped" so much as "pared down" but for a girl raised among Lannisters, the view is still shocking).

"Only if it's not too much trouble. It was the first thing I would see when I walked through those doors," Sansa remarks, and smooths her hands down the front of her skirt as they reach the doors of the Council Chamber to slide everything back into place.

Devan knocks, listens, and opens the door. "Lady Sansa, of House Stark of Winterfell, daughter of Lord Eddard and Lady Catelyn," he announces. His head is turned away, so she can take a deep breath and square her shoulders before she steps carefully over the old threshold and into the Council Chamber.

He's alone, save for Ser Davos Seaworth, who respectfully stands when she enters, and her jaw loosens a bit. She's had enough of "private" audiences to last her a lifetime. King Stannis hasn't changed a bit since she last saw him, save for an extra line or two around his eyes, and he watches her approach him from his seat at the head of the Council table with his fist pressed against his mouth. He's in a simple charcoal three-piece suit and red tie, crisp white shirt buttoned all the way to his throat, sigil ring gleaming in the overhead lighting. Everything about Stannis screams sharp lines and hard edges, and Ser Davos and his soft brown wool suit fades in the background behind him. The sign of a good Hand, Sansa supposes, ever-present, but never overbearing.

She tucks one foot behind the other and slides low before the King. "Your Grace," she murmurs, relaxing her shoulders and dropping her head. There's silence for a beat, then another, and another, and Sansa locks her knees and tightens her thighs, and finally Stannis lowers his fist and rises to his feet. "Lady Sansa," he greets her, and she pulls herself back to standing. "I presume your accommodations are to your liking?"

"Very much so. My lady mother would like to pass along her thanks for offering to provide lady's maids as well. Danyelle and Bethany and Jenny have been very welcoming and accommodating so far."

Stannis frowns—no, that does him a disservice. His face simply doesn't change from its resting scowl. "It makes no sense for the Keep to quarter every House's servants for two weeks when we have men and women to spare and double-digit unemployment in the city."

"Still, we thank you, Your Grace," Sansa says again, dipping her head. "I have no doubt that I will be well-tended-to for Princess Shireen's wedding."

"The moment you're not, let Davos know, and he will see to it," Stannis tells her, and crosses the room in long strides to where two armchairs sit across from each other. He waves his hand for her to join him, though Davos sinks back into his seat and watches them from the table. "We have another matter to discuss, and there's no point in mincing words about it."

"If this is about the timber stocks, perhaps my brother would be the best person to speak to," Sansa says, lowering herself into an armchair and crossing her ankles, but Stannis waves his hand.

"Robb and I finished that this morning. You did email that contract to him, didn't you, Davos?"

Davos nods from where he jots notes on a legal pad. "Yes, Your Grace."

The hair on the back of Sansa's neck starts to prickle before Stannis turns his steely stare back to her. Still, she keeps her eyebrows in a neutral position and the corners of her mouth turned up—a pleasant and blank expression that had seen her through many years in this very Holdfast.

Stannis leans back in his chair and rests his elbows on its arms. "I've made the decision—not officially, not before Shireen's wedding—to give Storm's End and its Lordship to Edric."

"Edric…Baratheon. King Robert's son with Lady Delena?" Sansa asks, and Stannis nods once. "But legitimizing him would place him ahead of you—"

"I didn't say a word about legitimizing him," Stannis interrupts with a tilt of his head, and Sansa shuts her mouth so quickly she's sure she hears her teeth click. "But Shireen cannot hold the Iron Throne, Dragonstone, and Storm's End. As unsavory as I find the prospect of Storm's End going to a child conceived out of wedlock, Edric was raised there, and he has the Baratheon name—his sons will bear the Baratheon name."

Claxons ring in Sansa's head, even as she demurs: "A sensible plan, Your Grace."

"Unless Storm's End is to pass to some seventh or eighth cousin thrice removed, whichever lawyer or doctor Davos finds in the family tree, it's the only plan." Stannis shifts in his chair and levels Sansa with the same stare her father used to give when he'd made a decision and would not be swayed. "You will attend Shireen at her wedding to Quentyn, and on her honeymoon to Dorne, as was already decided. And after a reasonable amount of time, say, two or three months, you will marry Edric—quietly, and without fuss—and move to Storm's End."

Sansa's whole body shivers—or, it wants to, and it certainly nearly feels like it. Chills wash over her in waves, and her arms and legs feel heavy and restless. "I can't." The words came from deep in her chest, and they got out before she could stop them.

Stannis wraps one hand into a fist on his thigh. "Lady Sansa, there are still factions in the North that call your father the King of Winter. They were ready to plant a crown on your brother's head if your father had died down here. He had agreed to unite our Houses before everything went to pieces, so consider it a fulfillment of his wishes if that helps to you sleep at night. This will show the separatists that your family is committed to the Iron Throne, _Seven _Kingdoms, and House Baratheon."

Instead of urging her into acceptance, the King's explanation does the exact opposite. _Once again, I am held as the figurehead of House Stark_. She and Stannis regard each other in silence, until even Davos' pen stops scratching from across the room. The King says her name again, and Sansa unclasps her hands to smooth her skirt down again. "I'm sorry, I was just remembering. This is the very same room that I was called to, after my father and all of his men had been arrested and taken to the old dungeons underground. Cersei and Varys and Pycelle all accused me of having traitor's blood like my father and my sister and then had me sit at that table right there and write letters to all of my lordly relations, asking them to come to King's Landing to…swear fealty to Joffrey." Stannis has had the decency to look at the wall by this point, but Sansa's whole body still sits on the edge of all-over trembling. "I was only fifteen at the time, but it's quite a vivid memory, looking back."

Stannis pushes himself out of his chair and stands behind it, as if needing to put something between himself and the woman before him, who only has a handful of years on his own daughter. "I—" he pauses and clenches his jaw, searching for the right words "—appreciate the weight of your experiences here in King's Landing, but I have a Kingdom to hold together, and the weight of a crown behind me to do it. Now, unless have somehow managed to marry without those snakes outside finding out about it, or you are otherwise legally unable to marry, you _will_ marry Edric. Whatever arrangements you and Edric come to following the birth of your first son is between the two of you."

Sansa barely hears the last sentence Stannis grinds out, because her mind is whirring so quickly and so loudly that it drowns him out. In the space of a few seconds, she chases thought after thought until she lifts her head and looks the King right in the eye. "I _am_ married, Your Grace, which I why I told you I couldn't marry Edric. I'm sorry about all of the…unpleasantness—we just haven't told anyone yet, no one at all, and I didn't know how to even bring it up."

Stannis' knuckles are white where they grip the back of his chair. "You're married," he states, deadpan, and his brows furrow over the bridge of his nose. "To whom?"

She smiles placidly, belying her thundering pulse. "Jon. Lord Snow."

The next twenty minutes are filled with tense silence, though Sansa thinks that she can hear Stannis grinding his teeth all the way from his spot at the window. Davos phones for a glass of water when she admits that, yes, she is quite parched, that flying will do that to you. Her mouth is as dry as a dornish sanddune, and the glass she sips on does little to chase it away. She prays to the gods, old and new, even the Lord of Light, that Jon will play along, or at least let her do the talking. _Gods, let him _smile_, just once,_ she thinks, tilting her glass back to get the last swallow.

Jon's been given a room in the White Sword Tower, so it takes a while for Devan to get there, collect him, and bring him back. The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard still lives there in his own quarters, but the general ranks have ballooned in recent decades and the barracks are now out in the city proper. Now, the extra rooms are given to the security details of royal guests, used as quasi-squadrooms for on-duty Kingsguard members, and as storage for artillery. He's a senior member of the Night's Watch, the order that used to guard the Wall but shifted into a security role for House Stark nearly two centuries past, when the Wall "fell," for lack of a better term. Three hundred miles of ice isn't falling any time soon, but it's a right natural bottleneck for immigration and trade. And Jon is a Lord in his own right, of House Snow, a smaller Northern House, but you'd barely know it to look at him.

Now is one of the times where he looks the part of Lord Snow, though, Sansa thinks, when he enters after he's announced. She can take a single look at him and know that he hasn't run more than his fingers through his hair since they've arrived, but he's changed out of his "Brothers' Black"—dark wash jeans and some variety of black shirt—into a smart grey suit, complete with a slim black tie. He instantly locks confused eyes with her, lips pressed into a thin line, and she says, "Oh, darling, there you are," loudly, and before Stannis can get a word in edgewise. It breaks about ten types of protocol, so she's not surprised when Stannis' nostrils stay flared even when Jon smoothly breaks their stare-down, takes a few steps into the room, and bows at the waist. "Your Grace."

"Lord Snow."

As soon as those words are spoken, Sansa pushes herself to her feet and crosses to Jon's side as casually as she can. "Jon, I've had to tell His Grace about our wedding." She doesn't know how he'll react to her taking his hand, so she settles for looping her hand around his forearm. In her peripheral vision, she sees that he's working hard to keep a blank expression, but she shies away from staring intently into his eyes as a way to try to communicate with him telepathically. On the one hand, it just wouldn't work; on the other, Stannis and Davos would see through it in an instant. "I know that we had been waiting for the right time to tell papa, but His Grace had broached the idea of marrying me to Edric Baratheon to solidify our Houses' unity and I simply had to tell him."

She can feel the exact moment of his understanding in the shift of his muscles under her fingers and against her arm. Only then does she dare to fully turn her face up to his, but he's already nodding and giving Stannis an apologetic-looking furrowed brow. Smiles always came slowly to Jon—Sansa can count the number he's ever given her on one hand. "We didn't want to overshadow Princess Shireen's wedding."

Stannis has a face as thunderous as the Storm Lands themselves, and Sansa thinks he looks strangely like Robert, when the old King had been drunk off triple doubles of scotch and Cersei would push his buttons with an impertinent comment and a sideways smirk. Finally, he runs the back of his hand across his lips and paces along the wall to brace a hand on the mantle of the fireplace. "I don't like secrets, my Lady. I think the kingdoms have had quite enough of that for one lifetime," he says. "The fact that your father is sick does not excuse you from informing the other parties. In fact, your brother would stand in for your father, or myself. Instead, you've gone forward with some secret marriage that is completely beneath your station as the first daughter of one of the Great Houses."

Sansa casts her eyes downward, letting the chastisement roll over her. She was used to that, and kings tend to have a short attention span that one simply has to ride out. She's lived in the same castle with three of them, after all. She sees Jon tilt his head out and try to catch her gaze, but she doesn't meet his eyes.

Sure enough, Stannis huffs, tells Ser Davos to have the "appropriate arrangements" made for Jon, and dismisses them. Jon and Sansa bow low on their way out the door, and Sansa thinks that they're in the clear until she hears Stannis mutter to Davos, "Get me the marriage certificate."

Jon curses under his breath and casts a dark look at Sansa from the corner of his eye. She knows her own expression is one of stunned panic, and he shakes his head. "I'll take care of it," he says out of the side of his mouth, where Devan can't hear. Then he jerks his chin at Davos' son and tells him that he's "got it from here, mate." Jon's strides are long and quick as he moves down the corridors and across the courtyard, and if Sansa were much shorter, she might have been sprinting beside him.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she says, as soon as her door closes behind her lady's maids. "I said it before I thought it all the way through—"

"Where's your laptop?" Jon asks, cutting her off. He's opening her desk drawers, but she pulls it from her tote, where it's sat since she first got here, and hands it to him. It's password protected, but he knows her login information anyway—it's in her file with the Night's Watch and the senior officers know it by heart. Within minutes, he's shooting through lines of code, doing things on unfamiliar screens, and Sansa's heart is beating so fast that she has to turn away and pace from the corner of the desk to the window and back again and again. She was so _stupid_, how could she have forgotten about the marriage certificate? This wasn't the old days—they couldn't just say that they married in front of a heart tree and dare Stannis to contradict it.

"All that's left is the date," Jon says, pulling her out of her thoughts.

Sansa presses her fingers to her temples and tries to think. Too recent and it just wouldn't make sense—she and Jon barely crossed paths in the past few months. The trips the family had taken unspool through her mind in fragments and her palms start to sweat. She wipes them on her skirt and a flash of blonde curls and sharp green eyes cuts through her mind's eye. _The best one is between your legs_. She needs to stop thinking about romance and think about _sex_.

"Make it around three months after I got back to Winterfell," she tells him. His eyebrows pull together, and then she sees a muscle jump in his jaw even as he types in a date.

"Done," he says, with quiet resignation, leaning back in his chair.

"I'm sorry," Sansa murmurs, again, because his is the other name on the certificate, after all. "I don't even know if you're…seeing someone."

Jon sits in silence, staring at the screen, and Sansa wonders if she should touch his shoulder or apologize again, but she just stands beside him with her hands on her hips. "I'm not, but it wouldn't matter now," he shrugs and closes the laptop. His gaze falls on the bed across the room when he swivels around, and then he jerks it to Sansa, who is still standing in the middle of the room. "I'll sleep on the couch," he offers out of the blue, "and get up before the maids come in the mornings."

Sansa nods, and Jon tugs his tie loose with a heavy sigh. The first of the servants arrive with his suitcases, and Sansa pulls the corners of her lips into a smile. One of them has to, at least.

* * *

It takes barely two hours for the news to leak. It starts with a ticker underneath the afternoon soaps, but by early evening, it's the lead story on all of the major networks. Sansa sets her phone to vibrate for all of half an hour, while she and Jon silently eat the grilled chicken salads delivered to them, but when she misses calls from her mother, brother, even Arya, she turns it off and shoves it under her pillow.

Jon's turned it to an entertainment channel when she comes back into the solar, where a split panel of three talking heads jabber away. He's put his glasses on, and the colored lights from the television reflect off the lenses.

"—They've been married for _years_, Larynt!" the blonde woman says, gesticulating with a sharpie. "How have they kept this under wraps?"

Jon lunges for the remote when Sansa sits down next to him, but she holds her hand out and shakes her head. "It's fine, Jon." He settles back into the cushions uneasily, but doesn't insist.

"For those of you just now tuning in," the sole male commentator butts in, pushing his own sleek frames up his nose, "this is breaking news from the Red Keep. Lady Sansa Stark and Lord Jon Snow have been married since the _year of her return to Winterfell_. That's four years, folks, four years. Now, we all know about Lady Sansa—daughter of Lord and Lady Stark of Winterfell, formerly engaged to Joffrey 'Baratheon'—" Sansa's eyebrow quirks at the air quotes the commentator makes around Joffrey's last name "—but Lord Snow, he's one that we haven't heard about in quite a while, right, Samara?"

Samara, a dark-skinned woman wearing a colorful scarf nods emphatically, sharing a screen with images of teenaged Sansa standing alongside Joffrey at the opening night of the Opera and christening a warship, and a muted video of her clapping in the stands of the football stadium. "You're right, Laurynt. He's from a minor Northern house, so it's quite an interesting choice for Lady Sansa, who, as you said, had been queued up to be Queen of Kingdoms. But, you know, Lord Snow was raised at Winterfell after his parents were killed in that horrible, horrible fire—"

"And he should have died, too, right?" Laurynt queries. "Or am I thinking of—"

"No, you're right. They were re-painting his bedroom then, so he'd been put in the room next to his nanny's, all the way across the keep. Truly a bittersweet event," Samara notes, shaking her head in an attempt at sympathy. "Lord Stark took him in—he was only a toddler at the time. He's not yet rebuilt the castle, and he works for the Night's Watch now and lives in Winter City most of the year."

"Easy access, then," the blonde says slyly, waggling her brows. "They married only months after Lady Sansa and Lord Stark were sent home by King Stannis, so I think we know what happened there."

Jon rises off the couch and crosses to the small bar wedged into a tiny alcove. He pours out a tumbler of bourbon, and Sansa calls over, "one for me, too, please." The bourbon is spicy and warm on her tongue when she takes a good swallow of it.

"The official word out of Winterfell is still 'no comment,'" Laurynt informs the viewers, looking down at his cards while images flash across the screen of Sansa, pale and drawn, walking down the street in Winter City with Arya and staring impassively at the paparazzi's camera that had taken the shot. Then a shaky video of Jon replaces that one, striding down a similar street with Robb, both of them laughing at something off-camera and Robb lifting a lighter to the cigarette in his mouth. They were younger there, though, their beards still light and downy on their cheeks, no more than nineteen or twenty. Robb looks much older now, with a sudden streak of silver over one eyebrow—that's how she can really tell.

"So, what's the story?" Jon asks, lowering the volume on the television.

"For them or for my family?" Sansa takes a sip of the bourbon and only winces a little bit as it slides over her tongue and down her throat.

"Your parents." Jon braces his elbows on his knees and rotates the glass in his hand. The amber liquid swirls dangerously close to the rim of the glass, but Sansa says nothing. It seems to be a bit of a game to him.

She takes another sip—a big one—and tucks her hair behind her ear. "I was struggling with coming back home," she starts. Her words seem to catch in her throat, but she'll have to repeat them to her mother, so she forces herself onwards. "And you and I started a tryst, an affair—a _secret_ affair, and I got pregnant, but I miscarried almost immediately after the wedding." There, it's out, and Jon still peers into his bourbon with a frown. "And we've been keeping it quiet because we haven't wanted to upset my family."

Jon nods. "Let's keep it simple like that, and vague. The press can run wild with it if they want, but it'll all be speculation. So, we're going to go with happily married, and not waiting for divorce filings?" he asks, without looking at her, but his voice has an acerbic edge that sends Sansa off the couch, glass in hand. The rug in here is so plush that it nearly comes up in between her toes.

"I don't want to marry Edric Baratheon and go rot in Storm's End for the rest of my life." Her voice is sharper than she would have liked, but this bourbon is _good._

For the first time in hours, Jon meets her eyes, this time with the slightest surprised curve to his mouth. "Happily married it is, then." She nods, and as the commentators start to analyze the fullness of her jackets (same pictures, different proposed father, she supposes), she turns and heads back into the bedroom to turn her phone back on.

She calls her mother, and it's a shorter conversation than she'd expected. Her mother is silent for most of the five-minute phone call. Samwell Tarly had already found the marriage certificate in the databases, so Sansa doesn't have to field the usual "is it true/how will we manage this fake story" questions. It's almost like her mother is in shock, and Sansa sits on the side of her bed and sets her forehead into her hand in guilt over giving her mother yet another burden to bear. She's already told her father, her lady mother tells her, since he'd have seen it on the television sooner rather than later, and yeah, Sansa feels pretty shitty about all of this. But then she thinks of the other option—leaving her family to live at Storm's End with Edric Baratheon—and she tells herself that it's really six of one and half a dozen of the other.

It won't be too bad, Sansa thinks in the shower after she's hung up her call with her mother. She has about a thousand engagements to attend before wedding itself—all of which Jon will now have to go to as well—and then the honeymoon in Dorne. But afterwards? What if they stage the divorce as soon as that's all done? Won't Stannis just marry to her Edric right away? But what if Edric doesn't marry for _years_? What are she and Jon supposed to do then?

_Get through this_, she tells herself, wrapping a towel around her hair and sliding into her pajamas. _You and Jon will figure this out_.

She's surprised to find almost all of the lights out in the chambers proper, save for the dim one next to her bed. She pokes her head into the solar and sees Jon lying out on the couch. It hadn't seemed like a big deal earlier today, but now she can see that he's simply too tall for it. Even with his head propped up on one end, he still has to bend his legs and rest his knees on the back cushions to fit. The thought of him spending weeks like that tugs at Sansa's heartstrings, and she realizes that it may not have been particularly selfish of her to agree to it in that moment, but it _would_ be selfish of her to make him stay there, given how pathetically cramped he looked.

He looks blearily over his shoulder at her when she shakes him, blinking and squinting in the darkness of the solar. "Jon. The bed is big enough," she whispers, even though there's no need with the two of them. He resists a bit when she tugs on his elbow, but she shakes her head and tells him to not worry about it. "Please, you'll mess up your back sleeping like this," she says, and he finally lets himself be led to his feet and into the bedroom.

The flannel pants and white tee he wears keeps her from blushing—she hadn't even thought about his dress (or undress) when she'd decided to let him sleep in her bed—and it's true, the bed really is quite wide. These chambers _had_ belonged to a Targaryen princess, after all. Jon keeps one hand on the mattress as he groggily walks around the corner of the mattress, arm flexing once or twice when he goes a bit off-balance. "You're sure?" he asks, hesitating to turn down the sheets on the far side of the bed.

He's more awake now than he was a moment ago, but he's still squinting at her a bit, probably because the light is right beside her head, and pushing his curls out of his face, where they want to tumble after being rubbed against the arm of the couch. This is the most…casual she's seen him, since they were children at least and still ran around the castle in their pajamas before lunch every day. But she'd left for King's Landing with Arya and her father when she was fourteen, and even at seventeen Jon had still been a bit of a beanpole drowning in cords and sweaters.

Not now, though, and she can only nod and say, "Yeah, it's fine."

Almost in sync, they slide beneath the covers and Jon immediately turns to his side and gives her his back. For her part, Sansa unwraps her hair and drapes the towel over her pillow before she lies down, and then she turns out the light. Only the slightest bit of moonlight creeps through the windows at the far end of the room, and the darkness puts her at ease as she shifts and turns until she finds a comfortable position. Morning will come sooner rather than later, and she'll need to have her mask ready to play her part.

_Masks. They seem to be required for King's Landing_, she thinks hazily, and it's the last thing she remembers until morning.

* * *

Hope you all enjoyed! Let me know what you think! I'm also on tumblr (labonsoirfemme) so feel free to find me over there!


	2. Chapter 2

Oh, god, y'all, this chapter has been my bête noir for the last few weeks. Thanks for being so patient! You all are great and lovely people.

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The clang of sept bells jolt Jon from his sleep, eyes snapping open in the dark. For a moment, he doesn't remember where he is. The sheets are too soft, the room too dark—

Then a hand smacks around in the sheets next him and an electric hum fuzzes behind the fading echo of the bells before they start up again and he remembers _exactly_ where he is.

Sansa moans, pulls her cell phone from the covers, and swipes in her password just as the bells restart their clamoring. Her profile glows blue in the artificial light, the mass of hair on her pillow shining a light violet. When Jon stretches his legs out under the blankets, Sansa seems to become suddenly aware of his presence and gives him a long, slow blink.

"Morning, Jon." She rolls out of bed, her t-shirt twisted all around her shoulders and body, and shuffles to the window. The curtains part in acquiescence to the decided jerk that she gives to them. It must still be very early because the sun isn't above the horizon yet. The clouds float leisurely by the window, their bellies tinted pink and orange. It's actually quite a lovely sight, framed by the heavy grey curtains and with Sansa's upraised arms in silhouette. If Jon had a camera at hand, he'd snap a picture.

"So…" Sansa circles around the bed and twitches the sheets on her side of the bed into some semblance of order. Jon plants the heels of his palms into the soft mattress and pushes himself into a seated position. His glasses are on the nightstand beside him, and he flips the arms open and slides them up his nose so that her face is a touch more defined. He has contacts for the days that he needs to drive or do a lot of computer work, but his glasses do just fine on the other days. "I—we don't have any official engagements today, but I thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and get up so that we can be ready when the servants arrive and so on. I'm going to go ahead and change. Do you…" she laces her fingers together and fixes him with a neutral and placid expression. "Would you like to go first?"

Even though Jon has shared a bed with Ygritte and other girls on many different occasions, he still feels out of sorts, even with Sansa standing fully-clothed several feet from him. "No, go ahead. I need to shower but I just need to dunk my head, really."

She gives him a little smile over her shoulder. "Well, make sure to get behind your ears, too." She's perked up a bit after standing up for a few minutes.

He waits until after she slips into the bathroom with her clothes to peel the blankets away from his lap and wander into the solar to find the coffee machine. He grew up at Winterfell just like the Stark children, but he figured out how to brew his own coffee fairly quickly after joining the Night's Watch and moving into his own condo in the City. On the television, the early-morning news programs still discuss his and Sansa's "surprise" wedding, but with less salaciousness than the entertainment reporters from the night before. With Princess Shireen and Prince Quentyn's wedding only two weeks away, Jon hopes that all of the fervor will die down soon. With any luck, he and Sansa can slip away back to Winterfell after the honeymoon in Dorne without too much of a fuss.

"All yours," Sansa calls out as she exits the bathroom. She's picked out a blue skirt that floats airily around her knees as she walks across the bedroom to the wardrobe, and her silky white blouse is tucked in at the waist. He's thought ahead while she was changing and has already pulled out some dark jeans and a plain white button-down, clean boxer briefs hidden in between the two.

Even over the pounding shower pressure, he hears the door to their chambers open and close. A few female voices join Sansa's, muffled through the door and the solid wall of the bathroom. _Must be the lady's maids_, he thinks as he rinses the suds from his hair. He hasn't had the time to re-unpack his toiletries, so he uses just the smallest amount of Sansa's body wash—which smells like overly-sweet sugar cookies—under his arms, between his thighs, and over his feet.

He presses his phone to his ear while he buttons up his shirt, distantly counting the rings. The third ring cuts off mid-tone, and Robb's voice takes over. _It's Robb, leave a message after the beep_, Robb tells him, and Jon does. Jon hasn't heard from Robb since he left and he's probably busy, but give him a call back, man.

Out in the bedroom, Sansa's watching over the lady's maids unpacking his things. She catches his gaze and gives a little laugh. "I'd forgotten how little you packed, Jon. You don't even have a belt! We have a tour tomorrow and you've only brought your suit for the wedding." The lady's maids have smiles tucked into the corners of their mouths as they make the circuit from his small suitcase to the wardrobe and bureau, and Jon says defensively, "I thought at the time that I was only expected at the wedding."

Apparently oblivious to the lady's maids' expressions, Sansa shrugs easily. "No worries, darling. Nothing a trip into the city won't fix. And luckily, you're a 32, so we shouldn't have to worry about quick alterations."

She sends one girl to have a car called and the other with Jon's empty suitcase to storage. Jon steps up behind her to meet her eyes in the mirror over the bureau when she pulls her hair over her shoulder and picks up a brush. "You've got sharp eyes to see the tags of my pants."

"Jon, who do you think helps my mother with the holiday shopping? Beth Cassel?" With quick fingers, Sansa weaves her hair into a loose braid and ties it off with bright pink hair tie.

She's got him there. He heads for the wardrobe and opens the door to grab his boots and jacket. Next to all of Sansa's dresses, blouses, and jackets, Jon's side of the wardrobe _does_ look meager. "So, where to, then?"

She doesn't immediately answer. Shrugging his shoulders into place under the leather of his jacket, he turns around to find her fingering her gold necklace absently and staring at her reflection in the mirror with a little crease between her brows. When she sees him watching her, she shakes herself out of her reverie and turns to face him directly. "I'm not quite sure," she replies, almost flippantly. "I didn't leave the Keep much after…Joffrey became King. And when I did, it was for formal functions only. Not much shopping for me. But I'm sure our driver will know exactly where to take us." Her smile is wide and bright and doesn't quite meet her eyes, but Jon nods anyway and waits for her to choose a pair of sleek, black stiletto heels from the line of shoes in the bottom of the wardrobe.

On their way through their solar, Sansa's steps stutter and she turns around suddenly. In her heels, she's eye-level with him, and they both nearly go cross-eyed when Jon has to pull himself up short so as to not run into the back of her. "There are going to be paparazzi out, you know," Sansa tells him, mouth turned down in a frown. "So you have to, you know, _pretend_."

"We both do," he reminds her.

She huffs through her nose and arches her brow in a way that would have seemed rude if not for the slow blink of her eyelids. "I'm quite used to pretending. I just want to make sure that you're going to be able to…perform adequately."

"I _have_ done some undercover work. I'll be fine."

"Good." Sansa nods, turns back around, and finishes her walk to the door.

They barely take three steps out of their chambers before a chiming, rich voice calls out: "Oh, Sansa! Is that you?"

Lady Margaery of House Baratheon, as he lives and breathes. As soon as she'd married Renly, she'd gotten her own individual file with the Night's Watch, but now Jon understands the saying "pictures don't do her justice." A small army of servants are moving designer luggage into a set of chambers down the hall, and Margaery leaves them to walk towards them, black patent heels clicking on the stones beneath their feet. Beside him, Sansa hesitates for a second. He watches the wheels in her mind click into place—she doesn't read the tabloids like she used to, _before King's Landing_ as she calls it—and her lips curve upwards. "Margaery," she confirms, turning her head to the side to accept the kiss that Margaery places there. "You look so different from when I saw you last."

"Well, we were both younger then." Margaery lifts a shoulder and her black dress ruches fetchingly across her collarbones. "And I was in colors and enjoying the sunshine and nightlife."

Sansa's face turns appropriately sympathetic, and she reaches out to take Margaery's fine-boned hand in her own. "I am so sorry to hear about Lord Renly, Margaery. I know how much you two loved each other."

Margaery has been in mourning for her husband since he died during the War of the Five Kings several years past. Even today, four years later, she's wearing a black dress and a black bird-cage veil sits cocked over her heart-shaped face. Lord Renly left everything to his wife in his will save for the seat of Storm's End, including his ownership of the King's Landing Greatswords, his film production company, and all of his controlling interests in various corporations around the capitol and in the Stormlands.

Margaery's green eyes glisten behind the netting of her veil before she rolls her eyes to the ceiling and blinks the wetness away. "We did love each other. Very much so," she murmurs, squeezing Sansa's fingers. "But I'm raining on your parade, Sansa. Congratulations, darling, from the bottom of my heart. And _you_ must be Lord Snow."

Margaery tilts her head at Jon and offers him her free hand. Jon takes it and brings it to his lips, bending at the waist just a touch as etiquette required. "Jon, please," he says and puts a hand low on Sansa's back. "Thank you very much. We're just upset that everyone had to find out like this."

"Handsome _and_ polite." Margaery's quick eyes dart back to Sansa's face. "I can see why you snatched him up. Where are you two off to this morning?"

"Into the city. Jon only came as my security detail, but now he's to be my date and he just came off without enough suits." Sansa's voice is even and blasé, and Jon's grateful. He does have enough suits, after all. They're just all back in Winter City. Still, he doesn't want Margaery Baratheon or anyone else to think that he was purposefully unprepared.

Luckily, Margaery's face doesn't pinch in the slightest. "Oh, shopping! How fun! Where are you going?"

"Not quite sure," Jon says. "We're hoping that the driver will know a place or two."

"Don't be ridiculous," Margaery chirps. She calls over her shoulder for her purse. "I'll take you to Garlan and Loras' favorite. They're broad in the shoulders like you, Jon, and they love the cuts of the jackets there. It's still a touch early—breakfast, anyone?"

They end up at a little café off of a side street on Visenya's Hill, dropped off curbside by a Tyrell driver. Despite being a Baratheon in name, Margaery's entire detail wears small, green rose pins on their lapels. Jon comments about Stannis' recommendation that the guests leave their servants at their own holdfasts and Margaery laughs. House Tyrell has plenty of apartments here in King's Landing and more than enough money to pay them, she explains, and Stannis doesn't like her nearly enough to give her more than a single lady's maid, driver, and bodyguard.

"Sometimes I come here in a wig and sit out on the patio," Margaery tells them when they pick seats by the window. A few paparazzi had followed the sleek silver sedan from the Keep, but a few Tyrell bodyguards stand outside the window and blocked clear shots of the three of them while they settle down at their table. "It's a lovely view of the Great Sept from here, in any case. Nicer on the patio, of course, but decent enough from inside as well."

Jon and Sansa follow the line from Margaery's finger to the sight the white spires of the Great Sept of Baelor shooting up above the staggered rooflines of the buildings uphill. In the direct morning sunlight, each of the seven bells twinkle as they sway in the light wind. It's where Shireen and Quentyn will be married, and it'll be Jon's first time inside the Great Sept. He's not particularly religious, but if he ever feels the needs to call on any god, he's more likely to sit under an old heart tree in a godswood. He knows that nothing's _really_ watching him from inside the tree. Still, it's always peaceful and quiet. The godswood in Winterfell is his favorite—he can even find Lord Stark sitting by the little pools of water some days, and Jon'll just sit beside him for a little while. Lord Stark doesn't talk very often, but Jon can see in Lord Stark's eyes that he knows who Jon is, and he always pats Jon's knee or squeezes his shoulder with lips pressed tight together under his beard, and it's enough for Jon.

Sansa and Margaery each order yogurt parfaits and fresh fruit from the stammering, starry-eyed waitress, and Jon asks for the oatmeal and eggs and coffee for the table. The manager himself delivers the food a few moments later, tops off everyone's orange juice and coffee, and asks if there is anything more at all that he can provide for them.

"No, thank you so much, sir." Margaery fixes him with a beatific smile and delicately unpins her veil so that she can eat and drink without catching the edge the edge of it with her fork. "Shireen is so lucky, to be married in Baelor's by the High Septon. When I was little, I imagined that I would be married there. I had it all planned out in my head. I didn't even want to wear my mother's veil because I wanted the photographer to have the perfect shots of those little rainbows that the light through the High Septon's crown sends across the faces of the couples. I had been so adamant about not wanting to get married at Highgarden. of course, that's where Renly and I married in the end, in the little sept that I grew up in. It has its own sweet irony. That's what I tell myself, at least."

Sansa's always been a good listener. She watches Margaery's face intently as she sips her coffee and brings spoonfuls of her yogurt to her mouth. "It was a beautiful wedding, though, Margaery. It was your grandmother's dress, right?"

Margaery nods, a few silky curls slipping over her shoulder. "I didn't know that they let the pictures be shown in the capitol. Did you have a proxy to get around the firewall?"

_That_ drew Jon's attention from his silent consumption of his oatmeal. He did the math in his head—Margaery had been, what, twenty, twenty-one years old when she'd married Renly? Hell, even _he'd_ just been learning coding and hacking at that point.

"Oh, no." Sansa lets out a short laugh. "No, I wasn't allowed near a computer of any kind. But I've come across them since I got back to Winterfell after Blackwater."

"Ah." Margaery pops a grape into her mouth and turns her head back to the spires of the Great Sept. "Well, in any case, as beautiful as it is and even with all of my silly girlhood dreams, I'm still glad that Papa turned the Lannisters down when they offered me a crown for our army."

The words are out before he can stop them. "That was real?" Margaery and Sansa's heads swivel towards him. Sansa's pins him with the same look she'd used when they were children trying to keep secrets from Lady Stark, but Margaery's lips just twist to the side. "We were trying to trace any communication out of King's Landing back during the war," Jon explains, eyes flitting between Sansa's glare and Margaery's arched brow. "We saw connections between the Keep and the Reach, and of course, our informants told about an offer—"

"The Night's Watch has informants so far South?" Margaery seems both amused and surprised. Then, she shrugs and raises her coffee cup to her lips. "Well, once upon a time, the brothers of the Night's Watch were welcome in every keep in the Seven Kingdoms, so I suppose it's not so farfetched. But, to answer your question: Yes. It's true. Nearly the same week that Renly passed away, certain…_overtures_ were made in regards to my marrying Joffrey."

Sansa had still been engaged to Joffrey at that point—not like she particularly wanted to stay in the arrangement, of course. Jon had never seen Sansa so deliriously happy as when she was half-carried, half-walked off of the jet the night that she and Lord Stark arrived home. For once, Jeyne Poole had been more composed than Sansa, shedding only a few tears as she'd kept a firm hold on her father's elbow. _She hasn't cried outside her room this whole time_, Jon had overheard her tell Robb after Sansa had wrapped Arya in a tight embrace. _Not once._

Still, Jon sneaks a look at Sansa's face. She's not upset, just perplexed. "Why did you turn it down?" she asks. Her brows pull down and she taps her nude-polished nails on the handle of her coffee cup. "You would have been Queen, then. And the Reach army would have easily outnumbered Stannis' fleet."

"Oh, yes, we would have won, no doubt about that," Margaery concedes with a flick of her wrist. "And then what? Wait for some random journalist to get a hold of Joffrey's toothbrush when it's thrown out? There's no joy in being at the top when you can see how you'll fall. We're very lucky, Sansa, you and I." Margaery's smile is grim now, lips pressed together and corners pulled straight to the sides. Sansa meets Margaery's eyes with her own and nods slowly. Jon has the distinct feeling that he's intruding on a private moment, a private space between these two veterans of the War of the Five Kings.

Then, as quickly as she instigated the calm, Margaery breaks it. With a perky _well, we'd best get a move on!_, she waves over her shoulder for the check and pins her veil back into place. They all rise, and Jon sees the group of paparazzi that's assembled outside. Sansa sees them too. She pulls a tube of lipgloss from her pocket and swipes some on, rubbing her lips together to get an even coating. The Tyrell bodyguards have seen them move, and one comes inside the door to take Margaery's elbow. "Not too bad of a crowd out there, m'ladies, m'lord," he tells them. "The car'll be around in a minute." It takes Jon a beat to realize that, the first time in a long time, he's being included in the head count. Since he was eighteen, he's done this exact same thing for all the members of House Stark. He's on the other side of it again, only amplified tenfold. He's not just Jon Snow anymore, the orphan lordling whose parents died in a fire, tagging along with the family that took him in as a ward—

He casts a glance to his right and catches Sansa's face in profile. Because they grew up together, he forgets who she actually _is_ from time to time. Lord Eddard Stark's eldest daughter. The girl that would have been Queen if everything had just gone according to plan. And now, he's the man no one saw coming, not for years yet, and not of the rank anyone could have expected. Everything is going to be _very_ different, now, and the paparazzi are only the tip of the iceberg.

Still, when the silver car whips around the corner, Jon wraps his arm around Sansa's waist, like he's done dozens of times before to guide her through the press in Winter City. They follow Margaery and her bodyguard out of the café and make a dash for the car. He sees Sansa's shiny pink lips curl into a smile and she lifts her hand to wave to the photographers. He follows her lead, letting one side of his mouth lift under his beard and trying to keep his face from settling into his Night's Watch security glare. The reporters shout at Margaery and pepper Jon and Sansa with jumbled, frantic questions, but he urges her towards the open back door of the sedan. Sansa doesn't resist. She slides in first, ducking her head and swiveling on the corner of the bench seat with her knees and ankles expertly pressed together.

As soon as Jon closes the door behind him, the car lurches away from the curb. Margaery laughs gaily and pulls her visor down to check her make up. "Not many for King's Landing in the mid-afternoon, but certainly a crowd for early morning on a weekend!" she exclaims. "If we'd stayed another ten minutes, it probably would have been a mob scene. The gods only know what those photos of you two are going to go for on the market. You didn't happen to take photos at the ceremony, did you?"

"No, Marg, we didn't. We wanted it to be a secret," Sansa says.

"What a shame. Now would be a prime time to sell them. That's what Renly and I did with ours. Seven million gold dragons—half to the Faith, half to the Wounded and Fallen Soldiers fund." Margaery shrugs and pops the cap back onto her lipstick. "Oh, well. Baby pictures sell for so much more, anyway."

Jon jerks head sideways. Sansa's already looking back at him with wide-eyes. It lasts only for a second, though. Sansa blinks and the calm returns, and she lets out a charming laugh. _Completely fake_, he knows. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," she says, gracefully deflecting the remark.

The sedan hooks a left at the massive interchange at the bottom of Visenya's Hill and heads towards the glittering towers across the Blackwater Rush. The Red Keep looms above the valleys that once made up the slums and Jon can imagine a time when it seemed like the Tower of the Hand and the White Sword Tower were the tallest structures to ever be built in all Seven Kingdoms. With modern technology comes modern engineering, and the height of the Keep is matched and exceeded by the posh business districts across the Rush. Flea Bottom and the rest of the old slums have transformed over time into artsy communities and museum districts. The poor live _outside_ the city walls now, in massive, concrete behemoths near the factories in which they worked.

Eventually, the shadow Keep passes over the roof of the sedan. Even when Jon peeks out the window and peers up, all he sees is the cluttered hillside sloping up towards to the pink walls and then the sheer faces of the walls slicing straight up, as if dropped from the sky. Then they're past it, back in the sunlight, and the car hums across the Blackwater Bridge. Margaery chatters away about the renovations at Highgarden that her father has finally agreed to undertake now that Margaery will be gone for weeks, and how she's so happy to be tied to King's Landing for a little while because she needs to stop by the Greatswords' stadium and redesign Renly's old office. Every now and then, Margaery shoots a question his direction, always unfailingly polite and pointed. Still, Jon gets the sense that he's being evaluated and weighed, not unlike his experience with Lord Commander Mormont.

The avenues in South King's Landing are wider and straighter than those in the historic North. The sidewalks are roomier, the store fronts more spacious. It has a decidedly un-cramped feeling and reminds Jon of Winter City. Just—bigger. Margaery points out the shop's sign to the driver, and he nods and puts on his blinker before veering over to the curb.

This isn't the first suit shop Jon has ever been, not in by a longshot. Lady Stark took him for his first custom suit on his fourteenth nameday. It had been the first time he'd ever gotten anything before Robb, but Jon _was_ three months older than the future Lord of Winterfell. She'd stood off to the side, either _hmm_ing in agreement or shaking her head firmly at the selections the tailor made. After, they went to lunch, just the two of them, and Lady Stark let him have dessert, even though they were all have cake after dinner. She'd never felt more like his mother than on that day.

He heads straight for the blacks, rubbing the fabric of the cloths between his fingers to test their weights. The last thing he wants is to be outfitted in a heavy wool suit in the midst of a sunny spring in the South. "…Need to walk out with a few today, but how quickly can you do a few customs?" he overhears Sansa asking the tailor.

The tailor, a fit forty-something with close-cropped black hair, looks over Sansa's shoulder and gives Jon a once-over. "A week normally, but I can express anything for a friend of Lady Margaery's," he concedes, sending a wink to where Margaery flips through some navy fabric samples bound together.

"That would be wonderful." Sansa's voice is warm and thankful. "I would really appreciate it."

"C'mon then, Lord Snow," the tailor calls. He jerks his head to the open doorway in the back wall. "Let's go and get you measured up."

As Jon steps past Sansa, his eyes flick to Margaery, who sits perched on the edge of a wing-back chair. She's setting different fabric samples against each other under a white light, but Jon can still feel her eyes on the two of them. "You going to be alright out here, he asks, running a hand over her am. Sansa nods and loosely catches his wrist with her fingers. "I'll be fine. Go on." She seems relaxed enough, her lips curving up easily and her eyes crinkling softly, so he follows the tailor into the back of the shop.

Sure enough, he and the tailor ("Rhaegar, but call me Rhae. Hell of a reputation to put on a baby, don't you think? My mother loved her songs, though, and he had some pretty ones.") have done this enough in their lives that it's old hat. While Rhae measures Jon's inseam and fiddles with the hem of his jeans, Jon pulls his phone from his pocket. He doesn't have any missed calls; no texts, either. His thumb hovers over the "call" button in Robb's contact page. _C'mon, Snow_, he thinks, and starts the call.

It rings four times and goes to voicemail once more. Jon watches his reflection in the mirror as he listens to Robb's greeting and hates how worried he looks. The message he leaves for Robb is short, but certainly more upbeat than his expression belies. "Robb, it's Jon again. Sansa and I are out running errands but we should talk later. Call me back."

Rhae says nothing about the call—he acts like he's heard nothing at all. Jon doesn't expect any less. If you're dressing House Tyrell out of a storefront on Jaehaerys Avenue, it's because you earned it, not because they stumbled into your shop one afternoon and never left. Rhae smoothly tells him that he wants to put Jon in dark grey, accuses him of being in mourning when Jon wants to have black.

"Black is so _monolithic_," Rhae says with a roll of his eyes. "In grey you can at least _see_ the cut of the suit." In the end, Jon realizes that he's going to be buying five or six suits today, so a few different colors probably wouldn't be a bad idea. Rhae's going to do the grey custom, since the color he likes best—a stormy, cool grey that he swears will bring out Jon's eyes—isn't available to walk out with. The more he talks about what he wants to do with Jon's suits, the more excited he gets. "Sorry, my lord," Rhae says, not looking too terribly sorry at all. "I just don't get a set of shoulders like yours walking in here every day of the week."

Sansa slips through the door when they get to the ready-made suits, and Rhae steps out to put away his toolkit. She's got a navy suit in one hand and a black one in the other, and she brushes past him to hang them on a hook in the wall. "I almost pulled a brown one, but we both have that pale Northern skin. It would just wash you out." The little smirk in the corner of her mouth softens what was surely a metaphorical jab to his ribs.

She seems much more at ease today, much more like her usual self. Sure, she's quiet and polite, but the ice that had settled over her face and shoulders during the flight from Winterfell seems to have melted a bit. She rarely talks about what happened during her time in King's Landing, and Jon doesn't want to ask her outright about it. Still, Jon was old enough to remember the bright, talkative, starry-eyed thirteen-year-old who had gone South, and that was not the same Sansa who stepped off of the jet in the middle of the night six years later.

"Well, we don't want that," Jon agrees. Sansa reflexively runs her fingers along her braid and steps over to the cloth samples that Rhae had left out while Jon slips into the navy jacket. "I didn't know that you and Lady Margaery were such good friends."

"We're not, not now." Sansa shrugs noncommittally. "When I first came to King's Landing, she came to at court with her family fairly often. Every now and then, she'd stay a few weeks and it would be me and her and Myrcella running around the Keep together. It was fun back then and Cersei was…accommodating. But once King Robert died, she disappeared with Renly, obviously." She reaches up and fiddles with the collar of his shirt, frowning at the way it refused to be wrangled into place. With the furrow between her brows and the purse of her lips, she looks very much like Lady Stark. "This is the first time I've seen her since before the War. She's always been nice, though."

There's still a distant edge to her voice, one that she's trying to hide with all of her twitches at his clothes. "I just—" Jon starts, and then catches himself, trying to think about what he wants to say. Sansa pauses and lifts her eyes to meet his, fingertips skimming along the edges of his lapels. "I know you didn't want to come back here at all. And I know that there are people here that you don't want to be around. Just—let me know and I can figure something out. That's my job, anyway." Or had been his job, at least.

She swallows and drops her gaze. "Thank you, Jon," she murmurs, and he knows she means it. "And I will. But Margaery isn't one of them."

Rhae bustles back in, holding about ten suits over his arm. "Oh, good, a second opinion," he exclaims, laying the suits out over a bench. "There's a chair over there in the corner, Lady Sansa. Make yourself comfortable and let me know if you want any tea or coffee."

And that's how Jon finds himself stripped to his underwear in front of his "wife" of four years.

* * *

Later that evening, after they part ways with Margaery at the portcullis to the Red Keep and eat their dinner in front of the television, Jon's phone finally rings. He snatches it from his pocket, but it's not Robb's name flashing across the screen. It's Arya.

"So, were you ever going to tell me?" Arya's voice is accusatory and barbed, but Jon can hear the hurt underneath it. He sits down on the couch in the bedroom with a heavy sigh.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Arya."

"Whatever." They sit in silence for a few minutes. He can hear her clacking away on her keyboard on the other end of the line, and he's sure that she can hear the muffled television on his end. "I just don't get it. You and Sansa. That's like—a Mormont marrying a Frey."

Jon rolls his eyes. "Sansa and I never hated each other, Arya."

"Well, you've never liked each other."

"That's not true."

"Right, because you always were so keen to play house with her and go to her tea parties, huh?"

Jon nearly hangs up the phone. Gods, he and Sansa aren't even _truly_ married but Arya is just digging up old sister-on-sister dirt. He always hated those fights. "We're not kids anymore, Arya," he says, his voice devoid of the apologetic tone that he'd started the call with. "I'm sure you saw yourself with a mechanic when you were a little kid, too, didn't you?"

Another silence, longer this time. Finally, Arya breaks first with a whoosh of breath that crackles in Jon's ear. "Robb's really angry at you, anyway. That's what I was calling to tell you. He's not going to call you back."

A weight settles on Jon's chest and he slumps back into the couch cushions. The ceiling is patterned with a mosaic of tiles, and he runs his eyes along the seams. "I figured."

"Yeah. I mean, Mom and Dad are upset but…Robb's pissed."

Jon doesn't really know what to think. He's not even really _thinking_, just…remembering. All he sees in his mind is him and Robb growing up together at Winterfell. Calling each other "brothers" even after Lady Stark explained to them that Jon had different parents, so they weren't brothers, not really. Learning how to drive together, sneaking their first cigarettes and beers together. Robb telling him that he didn't give a fuck that Jon was buying a condo in Winter City, that Jon was still going to have his own room at Winterfell, right next to Robb's, for whenever he needed it. Sharing late-night scotches after long days of Robb politicking with the minor lords in the North and Jon standing watch close by.

Sansa appears in the doorway and tilts her head at him, her braid slipping over her shoulder like a red banner. _Everything okay?_, she mouths, and Jon makes himself nod in response.

But all that's really going through his mind is _Fuck_.

* * *

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